"The comments made by Anand Chandrasekher, Qualcomm CMO, about 64-bit computing were inaccurate," said a Qualcomm spokesperson in an email. "The mobile hardware and software ecosystem is already moving in the direction of 64-bit; and, the evolution to 64-bit brings desktop class capabilities and user experiences to mobile, as well as enabling mobile processors and software to run new classes of computing devices."

The press office slapped down the chief marketing officer? That could only have come from the top of the organisation.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has revealed that the company is planning to bring Office to the iPad with a touch user interface. Speaking at a Gartner event in Florida today, Ballmer said "iPad will be picked up when... there's a touch first user interface." That touch first interface appears to be making its way to the Windows version of Office first, with the iPad edition to follow afterwards. Ballmer noted the touch first interface is "in progress." Microsoft has previously released an Office version for iPhone without support for the iPad, noting at the time that tablet users could make use of Office Web Apps in the browser instead.

Sadly, I can't legally share any of the specific details of what law enforcement requested in this specific case.

I can, however, tell you that the inquiry was extremely specific, legally enforceable, and had nothing to do with the NSA.

Some press on this case implies that the FBI found this person from his activity our site. I can't disprove that, but it is much more likely that they found him through other means, and then tracked his activity on various sites to build enough evidence for an arrest, indictment, etc.

HTC Corp. is set to unveil the HTC One Max, which will have a fingerprint sensor among other features, on 15 October, two people familiar with the matter said.

That will put a new smartphone with a fingerprint scanner on the market alongside Apple Inc.'s iPhone 5S.

The HTC One Max will be based on Google's Android operating system. But it's unclear what kind of applications its fingerprint sensor will have, or whether it could be used to authorise app purchases or other transactions as with the iPhone 5S.

While fingerprint sensors seem poised to become a growing trend, analysts say they are still limited in their usefulness for now.

When I first surveyed Bitcoin users in March 2012, the average user reported purchasing around $1,600 U.S. of goods and services. I surveyed users on Bitcoin Talk Forums – Ulbrich's account there led in part to his arrest – and the Reddit subforum dedicated to Bitcoin[2]. The users on these forums are the most ardent supporters of Bitcoin, so I would suspect that the average spending per user was on the high side compared to everyone who has ever purchased Bitcoin. Based on 18,000 users actively buying things with Bitcoin (I based the number of active users on the number of reported active accounts from the largest Bitcoin exchange MtGox), I figured Bitcoin users paid for just under $29 million U.S. in goods and services from March 2011 to March 2012.

Seems like the FBI may have used the same multiplication it does for drug seizures on boats - multiply by a thousand or so.

I did about an hour of online research and decided I'd first try Google Wallet, and then maybe download mobile payment apps for a couple of retailers. Ease myself into this thing before becoming the Mobile Payments Master.

What I learned quickly made me re-think my entire mobile payments future. Whatever concerns I may have about data security, whatever confusion I have about payment platforms, nothing compares to the outrageous apps permissions demanded by the companies authorizing mobile payments. Just check them out below. This is what they demand in return for authorizing you to use their apps.

I expect smartphones will be used by nearly all [US residents over 13] by end of 2020.

That means about 270m users. It also means that about 125m more than are using smartphones today. Note also that a significant number of those under 13 will also use smartphones and that the metric is "primary phone" and insofar as there are more than one phone for some users they are a multiplicative factor. Finally this measure does not account for company assigned devices.

Microsoft yesterday threw in the towel on its attempt to build its own YouTube app for Windows Phone, revising that app to shunt users instead to the browser for accessing Google's video service via the Web.

The Web-based player experience is where Microsoft started before May, when the Redmond, Wash. company first launched its own YouTube app for Windows Phone. Shortly after Microsoft published the app on its Windows Phone Store, Google issued a cease-and-desist letter demanding Microsoft yank the app.

NIF [the National Ignition Facility], based at Livermore in California, uses 192 beams from the world's most powerful laser to heat and compress a small pellet of hydrogen fuel to the point where nuclear fusion reactions take place.

The BBC understands that during an experiment in late September, the amount of energy released through the fusion reaction exceeded the amount of energy being absorbed by the fuel - the first time this had been achieved at any fusion facility in the world.

This is a step short of the lab's stated goal of "ignition", where nuclear fusion generates as much energy as the lasers supply. This is because known "inefficiencies" in different parts of the system mean not all the energy supplied through the laser is delivered to the fuel.